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# Machine Translation without a source text

**Authors:** Harold L. Somers, [Jun-ichi Tsujii](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/jun-ichi-tsujii/), Danny Jones · **Year:** 1990 · **Venue:** COLING 1990 Volume 3: Papers presented to the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics **Link:** [aclanthology.org/C90-3048](https://aclanthology.org/C90-3048/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) — summary only

[**13** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/somers-1990-machine-translation-without-source-text/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[COLING 1990 Volume 3: Papers presented to the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/C90-3/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/C90-3048/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/C90-3048.pdf)

**Authors (3)**

1. Harold L. Somers
2. Jun-ichi Tsujii
3. Danny Jones

Citations and author metrics from OpenAlex (); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The authors propose an MT system that works without a prepared source text. A monolingual writer begins with a rough sketch of what they want to say, and the system acts as an «intelligent secretary» with knowledge of the foreign language. It asks the writer questions in a keyboard dialogue to collect what the target text needs, such as intention and register, which a finished source text would not state. The argument rests on the view that translation is under-constrained, and that domain knowledge, as in sublanguage approaches, fills the gap. The conclusion says that fully automatic high-quality MT is not to be expected, and that interactive systems should be explored. No evaluation is given in the part read.

## Ideas

- I1. Record unresolved choices: when the encoder has two near-equal options for a meta token (for example a register or a form of address), log it as an open question with the verse and the cost of each option, rather than choosing silently. Per author, the log shows where a human decision would help.
- I2. Size the question load: count per verse how many choices the encoder leaves open, and report the share that a single extra fact (the author's register) would close. This measures whether questions are worth asking before any interactive design is built.
- I3. Domain knowledge as the sublanguage of the Bible pairs: the meta concepts and frame anchors already form a restricted domain. Write down, per book, which concepts are domain facts and which are the author's choice, so that the choices that need a question are the ones outside the domain.

## For Mova

The question log is a natural form of the delta: an open choice can become an author override once a translator decides it. It is a measurable control for the author DELTA, since a choice that never changes the residual need not be asked. No interactive system is planned, and the idea is recorded for the translator's analysis only.

Topics: [Machine translation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/topics/machine-translation/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```
@inproceedings{somers1990machine,
  title = {{Machine Translation without a source text}},
  author = {Somers, Harold L. and Tsujii, Jun-ichi and Jones, Danny},
  booktitle = {COLING 1990 Volume 3: Papers presented to the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics},
  year = {1990},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/C90-3048/}
}
```

- [← previous A Study of Translation Edit Rate with Targeted Human Annotation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/snover-2006-study-translation-edit-rate-targeted/)
- [next → Problems with the second generation architecture and new trends in MT](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/somers-1995-problems-second-generation-architecture-new/)
- [↑ back to Machine translation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/mtrans/)

## References

21 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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